Jonathan Holmes

“Poliakov drives past the window each morning on the way to the embassy, each night going home. If they put up a yellow poster protesting against traffic, that’s the signal.”

Toby Esterhase in John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, explaining to George Smiley the routine for a crash meeting with the man he thinks is a double agent inside the Soviet embassy in London.

Access to metadata is remarkably easy for almost any law-enforcement agency to acquire.

“And at night? Weekends?” Smiley asks.

“Wrong number phone call. But nobody likes that.”

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That was what le Carre called “tradecraft” in the 1970s, long before mobile telephones, or email, or SMS. Even then, of course, telephones in the Soviet embassy would have been routinely bugged. But a journalist calling a source inside a private company, or even in the police or the public service, could do so in relative safety. Unless someone was actually listening in on the line, there would have been no electronic footprint left behind - no “metadata” stored on a communications company’s server.

How different it is today. Edward Snowden’s revelations have reminded us that, whereas actual phone-tapping might still need a court order, access to metadata is remarkably easy for almost any law-enforcement agency to acquire. Information about who you called, when you called, even from where you called, is just a few taps on a keyboard away from any authority wanting to know your source - or more likely, anyone wanting to know who your source has been talking to.

As The Age’s star investigative reporters Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie reminded their audience at last Friday’s Press Freedom Dinner: “With surveillance technology increasing, it is harder than at any time before to contact a whistleblower over a phone or a computer without leaving a trace. Luckily, the best form of investigative journalism is still the safest - meeting sources over a beer or coffee, face to face.”

But those coffee meetings have to be set up. And if your source is, say, a policeman who reckons his boss is on the take, or an executive in a company you suspect of bribing foreign agents, or a Treasury official giving you the lowdown on the political masters he despises, all it takes is one call or text message from your office phone or mobile, one email from your computer to his - or vice-versa - to put his job, and perhaps even his liberty, in jeopardy.

Safer to call from a public phone box, if you can find one. These days, they are rarer than hen’s teeth, and you can’t call a phone box back. Or use a sim card bought under a fictitious name. Or Skype your contact from an internet cafe. Today’s tradecraft.

For the source, whistleblowing to the media is more nerve-racking than it has ever been. As Bernard Keane puts it in the Media Alliance’s 2014 Press Freedom Report published last week: “…How do you know that a journalist, who may rather go to jail than reveal your name, doesn’t have poor IT hygiene and will be easily monitored by the government, or leave phone records that lead them to your door?”

Meanwhile, the relentless pressure on media companies’ budgets makes investigative journalism a luxury few can afford.

As Baker and McKenzie put it: “The number crunchers might say, what’s the point of ... allowing a couple of expensive hacks to spend weeks on a complex story that could disappear from the top of a website within hours?”

Not infrequently, your reporters can be hauled in for questioning by one of these outfits, without being able to tell you or your lawyers that it has even happened.

To its considerable credit, Fairfax Media still backs the likes of Baker and McKenzie in The Age, Anne Davies and Kate McClymont in The Sydney Morning Herald, and Adele Ferguson in BusinessDay. It is a safe bet that the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings that have riveted and shocked the harbour city in recent months would never have happened without Fairfax’s efforts.

To Clive Palmer’s fury, The Australian’s Hedley Thomas is still pursuing his business dealings, even as his political power increases. Meanwhile, the Herald Sun keeps breaking stories about dodgy dealings in the Victorian police and government sectors.

Of course, those that investigative reporters pursue will always question their motives, and those of their employers - sometimes, perhaps, with good reason. But surely no one who has watched the unfolding scandal in NSW can believe that the fourth estate is not an essential check on otherwise unaccountable power.

No one should believe, either, that high-risk investigative journalism will flourish when and if our major media companies die. Shoestring online operations will try to fill the gap, but the disparity in power and resources between them and their quarry will be stark.

For five years at Media Watch, I ridiculed and humiliated shonky journalists - and seldom praised the good ones. But they are out there, and we need them. As Baker and McKenzie told a roomful of their peers: “It is up to all of us in this room to have the courage, the enterprise and the hunger to keep digging, to keep publishing and to keep broadcasting no matter what.”

So long, they might have added, as there’s someone to pay their wages, and if necessary, their legal bills - which means, so long as enough Australians are prepared not just to read what they produce but to pay for it, too.

Jonathan Holmes is an Age columnist and a former presenter of the ABC’s Media Watch program.

34 comments so far

Good journalism? That is laughable. There was a time around the 70's when journalists were fearless, forthright and willing to take on all comers. Today, they write cautiously, always mindful of their masters' political agendas and whims. Murdoch and Fairfax press reporters are afraid for their shaky jobs and ABC reporters are afraid of government sanctions like budget cuts. All of them are afraid that politicians will stay away from them if they go in too hard. It's hard to know who to believe any more.

Commenter

DrPhil

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 4:56AM

The online herald sun layout is too pathetic to bother reading and has lost most its customer base, and the print media is about to go fully digital, therefore the ones whom keep up the best service, such as the AGE in Melb should really flourish. I think good journalism is prevented by political correctness creating the media to self suicide its so called freedom of the press, and limit the juiciness, and limit items readers can comment on, as that is a avid part for many readers even those whom read them only. Also journo's no longer seem to do old style investigative stories and dig as deep as they used to.

Commenter

Brian Woods

Location

Glenroy

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 8:05AM

When I see by Baker & Mckenzie in an article I'm in! These guys are both brave & credible. Very rare these days.

Commenter

Ferrari25

Location

Coffs harbour

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 5:28AM

I'll pay willingly for demonstrable truth

Commenter

David Stephens

Location

Dromana

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 5:40AM

Yes, and quality writing.

Commenter

LJanes

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 7:13AM

So will I. Amen.

Commenter

Factchecker

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 2:26PM

Can you just imagine what would have happened if these political party slush funds had not been placed before the public.Why is it that some politician run for cover (I will sue ) and other legal shelters if there is nothing untoward in their behaviour ?As it was once said... "an honest man has nothing to hide " , so why do these politicians become so afraid !

Commenter

srg

Location

nambucca heads

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 6:15AM

It seems that journalists are all-to-often really just trainee public relations officers. As adolescents they do their apprenticeships before going off to really write the news. Sounds cynical doesn't it? Alas 'the forth estate' of democracy has been bought for a development.

Commenter

cait

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 6:51AM

Journalists like Baker, McKenzie, Ferguson, West and others are one of the main reasons I still subscribe.

On a side note, using Skype with sources is not a good idea. Some better tips are here: http://www.slideshare.net/eschnou/digital-security-forjournalists

Also, is Fairfax planning on introducing Secure Drop or guides to assist potential sources in staying secure? Given the weakness of IBAC in Victoria I think something is needed..

Commenter

AndrewJ

Date and time

May 07, 2014, 6:58AM

That's why I happily hand over my hard earned for a printed copy of The Australian, one of the few papers that funds and supports serious journalism.

Speaking of slush funds, Hedley Thomas' dogged pursuit of the AWU slush fund affair that has not gone away after all these years has taken real courage.

As has been reported, angry phone calls to editors at The Oz and 2UE from then PM Gillard's office cost two journalists their job. Thomas still pursued this despite the threats, and has uncovered documents that that showed Gillard, in her own words, agreeing she set up a union slush fund (she stridently denies she has done anything wrong).

The Gillard government then set up the Finkelstein inquiry and tried and muzzle the media with a press regulator. This attack on press freedom and it's central role in democracy was abandoned after public outrage (except some luvvies on the Left who bizarrely supported it).

Hedley Thomas is currently being sued by Clive Palmer for digging into his affairs. This bully boy Palmer says the most outrageous things about opponents, then goes crying to his lawyers if any one pokes him back.

And finally there is Aussie journalist Peter Greste's imprisonment in Egypt.

As he wrote in a letter to mark World Press Freedom Day...“the best defence against insecurity is a vibrant, open, noisy, and yes at times even rabid press...muzzling the press is not only a moral affront, it is an abuse of basic universally accepted social rights and responsibilities — the right to speak freely and openly coupled with the media’s responsibility to question, interrogate, and challenge those in power.”